Directed
by Phil Young
Costumes designed by Nadya CohenSet designed by David BurrowsLighting designed by Mick Hughes

Wyndhams, London 1983

This show transferred to the West End from the Old Red Lion in
Islington. It was devised by the company of three actors and director
Phil Young, using a process very similar to that developed by
Mike Leigh (Phil Young had worked closely with Mike Leigh some
years before). The original designer at the Old Red Lion (and
designer of the costumes for the Wyndhams production) was Nadya
Cohen, a former student of mine, who has since returned to her
native South Africa and work in the theatre there.

The
West End production was produced by Robert Fox.

A
harrowing tale of a man's developing blindness following the onset
of diabetes. Essentially a love story, the show charts the developing
relationship of the central character with a blind woman as he
himself goes blind. The show ran for an hour and twenty minutes
without an interval. Its powerfully moving climax where the two
blind lovers cling to each other in the darkening room, vowing
their love for each other, regularly sent large numbers of the
audience away in tears. Crystal Clear came a couple of
years after the highly acclaimed Children of a Lesser God
(the American play which focused on deafness) and, coincidentally,
the two shows ran simultaneously for a while in adjacent West
End theatres.

Because
of its improvised origins and its reliance on the blind actor's
stumbling around a meticulously defined apartment the setting
was of necessity very naturalistic. My principal task was to retain
the sense of claustrophobic intimacy of the Old Red Lion in a
700 seat Edwardian proscenium theatre. The deep green walls of
the set related closely to the predominantly green auditorium,
and the set's cream Victorian style cornice continued the line
of the dress circle to create a completed 'circle'.